Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Welcome to the working group Gauge/Gravity duality

Within Theoretical Physics, over recent years new links between Quantum Gravity theories and ordinary Quantum Field theories were discovered which are referred to as gauge/gravity dualites.

The essential feature of such gauge/gravity dualities is to provide relations between branches of theoretical physics which appear to be distinct at first sight. In particular, gauge/gravity dualities relate quantum field theories on flat space-time, involving gauge symmetries to theories involving gravity. This relation is established on the basis of string theory.

In certain limits, gauge/gravity dualities have the particular virtue of mapping strongly coupled quantum field theories to weakly coupled gravity theories and vice versa. Thus these dualities provide a new tool for describing dynamical processes in strongly coupled quantum field theories, for which a description by conventional means is often difficult or even impossible.

Moreover, the dualities between quantum field theories and quantum gravity theories might be useful to shed some light on quantum gravity aspects such as black hole evaporation.

Within the research group we are interested in the (by now famous) AdS/CFT Duality and its generalizations which are known as gauge/gravity dualities. In particular we investigate the following research directions

Implications of the AdS/CFT Duality for Quantum Gravity, String Theory and Cosmology

Students

Textbook

Martin Ammon, together with Johanna Erdmenger (Max-Planck-Institute for Physics in Munich), wrote the first textbook on the renowned AdS/CFT correspondence, as well as its generalizations known as gauge/gravity dualities. This was the first textbook in this important research topic covering the foundations as well as the applications of gauge/gravity duality. The textbook is published by Cambridge University Press.